Saturday, December 9, 2017

What did Donald Trump do today?

He appeared at a civil rights museum opening, and in a robocall for a man who specifically cited the era of slavery as the United States' greatest time.

Trump spent 40 minutes this morning at the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, appearing only in private after outrage by some of the very people the museum honors. Citing Trump's embrace of white nationalist rhetoric, John Lewis and other veterans of the civil rights movement stayed away from the opening after Trump, at the last minute, accepted an invitation from Mississippi's Republican governor Phil Bryant to attend. Trump read carefully from a prepared statement, did not take questions, did not appear in public, and did not see any of the protestors who gathered to meet him.

Trump's actual reason for appearing in Mississippi is its proximity to Alabama. Trump is enthusiastically campaigning for GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore and held a rally just across the Florida border last night, but given the very real prospect that Moore may lose--almost unthinkable for a Republican in that state--he seems to be trying to hedge his political bets by not actually crossing the border.